Jesse, 15, builds a cardboard boat at the arts and crafts building with Rodney Craggs, a first-time volunteer at Camp Quality. Each camper is paired with a buddy for the week. This is Jesse's eighth year at the camp.
Lauren Nolan/Courier-Journal

Jesse, 15, builds a cardboard boat at the arts and crafts building with Rodney Craggs, a first-time volunteer at Camp Quality. Each camper is paired with a buddy for the week. Craggs, from Louisville, says the best thing about coming to the camp is "watching them have fun and just be kids". This is Jesse's eighth year at the camp.
Lauren Nolan/Courier-Journal

Story Highlights

At 17, Patrick talks of medical procedures like many kids his age discuss video games.

Experimental T-cell therapy. Genetically engineered. Reinfusions.

The patient sounds like a doctor. A cancer diagnosis will do that to you, even at a young age.

Since he was 5, Patrick has battled lymphoblastic lymphoma five separate times. In the past, chemotherapy and stem cell transplants have weakened his body.

Now the St. X senior stands strong in a field at Underwood, Ind. – cancer free again.

Behind him, each hooping and hollering kid has received a similar diagnosis. Cancer doesn’t discriminate. But at Camp Quality Kentuckiana, children affected by the disease have a refuge. No one comments on bald scalps or different gaits. Campers accept one another because they understand the costs of a cancer diagnosis.

Here, this third week of June, kids can just be kids.

“Sometimes all of us get so involved with hospital treatments, with chemotherapy, with hair falling out… that this week is a week away,” Patrick, who has attended Camp Quality for 11 years, said. “People are really living how normal kids should live … carefree.”

In the background, speakers pound Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” as the children land cheese puffs on one another’s cream covered heads.

A toga party like no other

Eddie Bobbitt drives up in a golf cart with a giant grin. For the past few days, the New Albany native has mulled over pumping music into the small vehicle for “golf cart karaoke.” The kids, he says, would love it.

For Eddie, it’s always about the kids.

A part of the national network, the local branch of Camp Quality caught Eddie’s eye 11 years ago. While the camp holds the honor of being the premiere event, other programs to benefit the children take place throughout the year.

Now the director of development, Eddie began at the camp as a companion, the equivalent of a counselor only more personal. Each camper age 5 to 17 is assigned a special cohort during his or her one-week stay.

Through year-round fundraising by the non-profit as well as private donations and sponsorships, kids and companions pay nothing to attend this $1,200-a-person camp. This summer, roughly 86 children hailing from Kentucky and southern Indiana took the trek. Around 25 of these kids have been recently diagnosed with the disease.

“Some of our kids are survivors and some are in the thick of treatment,” Eddie said. “That’s the whole idea. Let’s forget about treatment. Let’s go throw a pie at each other’s face.”

The organization excels at delivering the best camp experience imaginable. Activities at this year’s Olympic-themed event include a huge firework show, dances, professional hair styling, fishing, swimming, crafts, zip-lining and, of course, campfires.

““Some of our kids are survivors and some are in the thick of treatment. That’s the whole idea. Let’s forget about treatment. Let’s go throw a pie at each other’s face.””

Eddie Bobbitt

Six nurses from Kosair Children’s Hospital’s pediatric oncology unit supervise the fun and give parents peace of mind. Since the camp began 28 years ago, Nancy Lange has been among them. When she started in nursing, the survival rate for kids with leukemia, the most frequent childhood cancer, was 10 percent. As of 2015, that percentage has risen to more than 90.

Treatment, while lifesaving, also can be devastating on a child’s body. Certain therapies weaken their immune systems and prevent them from being in group settings. Ports for chemotherapy can stop them from doing certain activities while quite a few drugs make them as physically ill as the cancer.

“The children have been through more than most adults," Nancy said. "They do it with grace. They do it with courage.”

Camp Quality gives them back some of what they have missed. Kids don’t dwell on their diagnosis here. They live life in the moment, as all of us should.

“People come [here] thinking, ‘oh this is going to be sad’ and there’s nothing sad about it,” Nancy said. “If they can see the courage of these children and the brightness of how they look to the future, they can learn a lot about what is significant and what is not significant in their lives.”

As we talk, a young girl with a face filled with beautiful freckles enters the game room.

“May I join the party?” she asks Nancy in a singsong voice.

Her name is Trinity. She will be a freshman at Eastern High School in Pekin, Ind. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin T-cell lymphoma. Going on two years she has been disease free.

Last summer, an infection forced her to leave camp. Not this year, though. Despite side effects from her treatment, she continues through the week.

“It could be better, but it could be worse because there’s always someone out there who has it worse than you,” Trinity, an aspiring pediatric oncologist, said. “In order for your body to be healthy, your body has to be happy.”

Relaxing in a comfy chair before lunch, the 14-year-old radiates joy.

#CHOOSEJOY

Harper Wehneman’s family wants you to choose joy; that’s been its motto after losing the 9-year-old girl to kidney cancer in December 2014.

After she attended Camp Quality during a brief remission two summers ago, Harper, from Georgetown, Ind., beamed about going zip-lining. Through their non-profit organization Hope From Harper, her father Brian Wehneman and mother Melissa sponsored the activity at camp this year.

“It was really extra special for us because she had a great experience after being through something so horrific,” Brian said.

Deaths of these beautiful children are a reality at Camp Quality. Last year, a disc golf course was built to memorialize those lost. Harper, and her campmate Lydia who passed several months before her, both have baskets on it.

“It’s a fact of camp,” Eddie said. “It drives home why this week is so important, why this organization is so important. We are trying to celebrate the quality of life, not the quantity of life.”

And that quality is expressed in the friendships crafted here and the memories made.

As the sun sets, the children sing their camp song that reinforces this:

Camp Quality is in my heart. Camp Quality is in my soul. The friends I’ve made they live in me, their memories are just like gold.

Amanda Beam is a contributing writer whose social justice column appears every other Sunday in the Courier-Journal’s Forum Section. Feel free to let her know your thoughts and column ideas by emailing her at adhbeam@icloud.com.